The Last Long Road
by CheleSedai
Summary: The end of the world doesn't mean the end of the line. A post-season 2, post-apocalyptic Vampire Diaries AU story loosely set in the world of The Walking Dead. Not a crossover, will feature no characters from TWD.
1. Chapter 1 - The End

Summer comes and for the first time in a year, they try to pretend that things are normal. Nothing has changed and there is no way that their lives can be described as remotely normal, but they pretend. Even though Jenna is dead and Stefan is still missing, on the run or kidnapped or following Klaus around like a compelled little puppy; even if Tyler has to be locked in the Lockwood vault when the moon rises high and full in the sky and Caroline is still a vampire. They're pretending that it doesn't matter that Elena spends as much time at the Salvatore Boarding House as she does at her own, and Alaric is drunk on the couch half the time that she is there and won't take a bedroom no matter how often she offers it to him; even if Bonnie did annoy a hundred dead witches to bring her boyfriend back to life and they're never ever really normal.

They fake it.

Halfway through summer, Caroline declares "Road trip!" and Bonnie and Elena embrace the idea because that's what you do when you're seventeen and you've spent a year dealing with homicidal vampires, learning witchcraft, and cowering in fear of an Original vampire. Because they all need to get away from Mystic Falls and it doesn't matter at all where they're going as long as it's 'anywhere but here.'

Caroline decides that they're going to take a college tour because now is the time to start thinking about these things because they're not going to be seniors forever. She spins a tale of Stefan coming home and he and Elena doing the cutesy 'off-to-college' thing together and points out how Bonnie's grades will get whatever she wants and wherever she wants and that Jeremy will follow along like a little puppy. Which makes Elena alternately squirm and smirk, and Bonnie can't really blame her for that because it's still a little weird making out with Elena's little brother, and it's one of those times when they don't eat ice cream and talk about those more intimate details.

Damon scoffs at their plans while Alaric tells them it's a good idea. Tyler hangs around trying to get a tag-along invite and Jeremy comments that he wishes he hadn't taken that job at the Grille. Caroline kiboshes the boys before they even get started, pointing out that it's "ladies only" and promises that they'll all come back safe and sound and that she won't let any college frat boys get their hands on Bonnie. Alaric points out that there won't be many frat boys around in the middle of summer. Damon makes some comment about Bonnie and her mojo, but it's under his breath and halfway to complimentary so only earns a mild glare from Elena and Caroline.

Jeremy doesn't look relieved until Bonnie gives him a hug and they sneak off to his room. Where sneaking means walking right up the stairs hand-in-hand under the watchful eyes of his sister and her best friends with Alaric hovering because he doesn't quite know how to do the guardian thing or even if he should.

Before they leave, Damon lectures Caroline and she gets pissed off that he thinks she can't protect Elena, but then Alaric makes sure the tires are inflated and Tyler makes sure they have triple-A and that their bags are loaded in the trunk, sodas are in a cooler and a bag of potato chips is wedged between the front seats. They're off with laughter and loud music and Bonnie and Elena catch each other looking back in the rear view and laugh their asses off as Caroline peels off the down the road.

Normal, so, so very normal.

Caroline, as it turns out, has plans. She has a future laid out, and she shares it with Bonnie and Elena as Bonnie stretches out in the backseat and Elena barks at her to mind her driving and the road.

"Only one of us is going to live forever!" Elena cries out, cringing with a hand on the dashboard and another on the seat belt. It's a bump along their road of Denial and Caroline's face falls. Bonnie shifts in her seat ready to interject, and Elena bites her lip and looks ready to apologize when Caroline simply shakes it off.

"But we're all going to live like normal girls for the week!" Caroline does slow down, though, at least temporarily. It doesn't stop Elena from nabbing the backseat when they stop at a rest stop and shoving Bonnie up front with Caroline. Doesn't stop Bonnie from sticking her tongue out at Elena in the side mirror or stop Elena from pulling a face in return.

They eat Oreos, wave at a trucker and when they stop at a truck stop for an early dinner, they sit on the hood of the car while Caroline drinks her blood from a pink and yellow flowered thermos. They might have detoured, but Caroline is back laying out her life plan: how she'll get her Bachelor's and her Masters and be that girl that everyone envies because she looks so young.

"A little bit of proper make up magic, and I can get all the way to twenty-two," Caroline announces as she steals one of Elena's onion rings - because no one has to worry about boyfriends to kiss - and dips it in her chocolate milkshake making Bonnie frown.

"Eww," Bonnie says on command because it's what she says every time Caroline does that, and what she's been saying for years.

"You should try it," Caroline enthuses. Another onion ring goes in, Elena's hand belatedly smacking at empty air as she tries to counter vampire reflexes, and then Caroline dangles the grossness in front of Bonnie's face. "Mmmmm ..."

The restroom is busy when they stop in before heading out, and Elena comments that she really hopes it's not food poisoning. It's too late to see the campus when they get there, so they get a room at a motel, order greasy pizza and watch a pay-per-view romantic comedy because there's more than enough drama, mystery and horror in their lives.

Campus is dead when they get there the next day. Even for summer, the place is deserted. In the main office they learn that the campus is all but shut down. The receptionist who looks more than a little peaked and pale tells them that there's some summer bug that's being incredibly vicious. It's leaving few standing in its wake and more than three-quarters of the auxiliary staff is out sick.

They show themselves around but it's not quite the same. The eerie quiet of the campus coffeehouse - one barista and a handful of students lounging around - decides for them that it's time to move onward.

Bonnie's phone chirps a text message as they're climbing in the car, and she looks down, expecting Jeremy. Instead it's Damon.

_Come home now. We need your witchiness._

"Jeremy missing you already?" Elena teases.

Bonnie frowns and shakes her head, fingers already sending a message back to Damon. "It's Damon."

Elena's face falls, goes from surprised to jealous to worried in three seconds flat. Because no matter how much she loves Stefan, everyone with a set of eyes can see she has a thing for Damon. Yet, even she knows that Damon and Bonnie aren't the social hanger out types. If Damon is texting Bonnie - and vice versa - it's not a good thing. "What . . . what does he want?"

"Is it Klaus?" Caroline looks anxiously between her friends and her cell phone is already out.

Bonnie's text is returned via the ringing of her telephone. She answers on the first ring, "What's going on, Damon? Is it Klaus?"

"_No_," the older Salvatore's voice comes through with a touch of annoyance as though wondering why she would ask such a thing. _"Don't you think I would have told you if it were Klaus?"_

'Not Klaus,' Bonnie mouths to Elena and Caroline and watches her friend's shoulders visibly relax. "Then what is it?"

_"Everyone is getting sick."_

Bonnie smiles. It's a light smile, a soft one, her mouth twitching and then she laughs. "Everyone is getting sick?"

It takes a moment, but then Caroline rolls her eyes and tosses her hands up in the air. Elena shakes her head and giggles.

_"I can hear the laughter, but it's not funny. This is serious. __**Everyone**__ is getting sick. Everyone in Mystic Falls is getting sick."_

There's something in Damon's voice that sobers her. With her vampire hearing, Caroline sobers as well and Elena looks between them.

"What? What did he say?"

Caroline shakes her head. She's already there - at the place Damon had to be going when he texted Bonnie. "No. That's not possible. It can't be a magical sickness, can it?"

They're standing in the middle of a near lifeless college town. Not a car, bicycle or pedestrian has passed them.

Stranger things have happened. They know because they've lived them.

"We're coming home," Bonnie tells Damon, without looking at Carolina or Elena for confirmation. Just like that, their roadtrip and 'normal girls' week is over because this is what their lives have become and it's what they always do.

By the time they reach the town limits of Mystic Falls, Caroline is driving like the devil himself is on their asses, Bonnie isn't arguing and Elena is in no condition to chastise. It hit Elena two hours into the drive on the way home. They stopped by the same rest stop that they did on the way out, only this time it was littered with people sleeping off sickness in their cars, truck drivers stumbling bleary eyed and flushed out of showers to sleep in their cars.

Elena went to splash water on her face and almost tumbled into the sink. She was dizzy and cold, and by the time they got her into the car, all she wanted to do was sleep.

Now with her head resting in Bonnie's lap, she's shivering and sweating and burning hot to the touch. Caroline has the nearly empty road to herself but they still can't get Elena to the Gilbert house quickly enough.

Damon takes one look at the girl, being carried on Caroline's back like she weighs no more than a football - and really, for the vampire she probably doesn't - and blanches. Before Caroline can say a word, Damon has Elena in arms and has whisked her up to her bed. With a quick word to Alaric and Jeremy, Caroline and Bonnie bound back out the door to get Bonnie's grimoire.

It's an effort in futility. The mass illness that's sweeping through Mystic Falls and the region isn't just sweeping through Mystic Falls and the region. It's everywhere, world wide and while every infectious disease expert in the world is trying to figure out where it came from and what caused it, no one is close to any answers.

It's not magical, so Bonnie trades shifts with Caroline, Alaric and Jeremy to take care of Elena who's slid into a semi-coma. The hospitals are full, the sick are being told to stay home and the first reports of death come three days later. With a quiet, grim glance at Alaric and Damon, Bonnie turns off the television before Jeremy wanders back into the room.

Damon tries blood. It doesn't work for Elena, or Sheriff Forbes when she takes ill, or Jeremy when he starts to show symptoms.

Bonnie plays nursemaid and caretaker. She and Alaric trade shifts and Damon visits the empty grocery stores and cooks dinners. Carol Lockwood and Tobias Fell are the first Mystic Falls casualties and the death toll is climbing around the world. Bonnie turns off the television and they play cards instead of watching the news that night.

At the first hint of dizziness, Bonnie hides it. Elena needs her. Jeremy needs her.

"You're sick," Damon confronts her when she tries to sneak a break and rest her head on the counter between spooning out soup that Elena and Jeremy spend more times spitting out and throwing up than actually eating.

"I'm fine," Bonnie argues. Because she has to be. Someone has to be.

"You're useless if you're sick."

"I'm _**fine**_," Bonnie stubbornly repeats, but she doesn't know why she's arguing and she's not sure what that shattering sound is or how the soup landed on her feet instead of in the bowl.

Then the lights go out and world collapses in on her.


	2. Chapter 2 - The Beginning of the Story

Bonnie dreams.

Fever dreams are what her Grams called them, those long endless streams of dream sequences that weave themselves haphazardly together but don't actually go anywhere. Doors that open into long buried memories of the past or glimpses of a the future. Dreams, the likes of which she hasn't had since Coach Tanner's death. Winding hallways and up and down staircases that end in rooms to nowhere or chasms to everywhere that aren't unlike an Escher painting.

_Grams bakes in those days before her mother walked out of her life and the kitchen is warm and smells of sugar and cinnamon. She has lopsided pony tails and a missing tooth and her mother dots cake batter on her nose while her father watches from the doorway and she asks if maybe Santa will really finally bring her a pony this year. . ._

"The witch is as good as dead," Damon's loud and vicious as he glares down Caroline but her friend shakes her head, eyes defiant as she glares at the older vampire whose blood made her what she is.

_Twisting corridors and the door to Elena's bedroom opens to the trio of girls at thirteen, painting toe nails and trying on Elena's bra because she was the first to get breasts while Bonnie got braces and all Caroline ever needed was a bright smile and those blonde bouncy curls . . ._

"I won't leave her," Caroline argues and she takes Damon's suitcase and throws it across the room. "You won't leave us!"

_Out the window to land on the ground beside Jenna's grave and Elena dressed in black, holding Jeremy's hand tight even though it didn't happen that way and when they look at her, dark eyes so solemn, her heart breaks and she wants to beg them not to leave her but they're fading fast before her eyes and the ground is slipping beneath her feet . . ._

Alaric hovers and presses a cloth to her forehead and then there's something warm and salty in her mouth and she chokes on it more than she drinks it but somehow it settles warm in her belly and his words float like a near tether as she tries to hold onto this dream, "She's getting better . . ."

"_I'm so proud of you," Grams tells her, pulling a brush through her hair. She's dressed like she was for her funeral and the brush is the one Bonnie keeps in a box under her bed, but she still smells like Grams, all spicy and warm and her hands are strong, though they are cold. Her eyes are filled with love and she presses her cheek to Bonnie's in the mirror. "The road is long and hard, but you can do this. You're stronger than you ever thought . . ."_

_She skins her knee when she falls off her bike at seven and it peels down to the layer of white skin beneath and she doesn't cry, even as she limps all the way home and Matt waves sadly at her from beneath the weeping willow and her father gathers her in his arms and then the tears start to come . . ._

Bonnie wakes with tears on her cheeks and an inexplicable emptiness in her chest. She shifts and rubs her face against the unfamiliar scent of unfamiliar sheets. Soft, but not hers. Her legs are tangled in the covers, and it's something of a struggle to free herself and thrown them all off.

Sitting up, breathing heavy from exertion, the witch looks around the unfamiliar bedroom. Heavy furniture and dark curtains, and her mouth is dry and her throat is scratchy. Her head feels like she's just done several major spells, and she flops back down to the bed as the last dregs of energy leave her.

Bonnie feels like the walking dead.

"Bonnie!" Caroline's voice is chipper and perky, too chipper and too perky and it makes Bonnie want to curl into a ball and shove her head beneath the pillow. The room is dark thanks to the heavy curtains, but Caroline's voice is like a bright ball of sunshine all on its own. "You're awake!"

She makes a non-committal grunting sound, all that she has the energy for and tries to follow her first instinct, that of burrowing back into the covers of the unfamiliar bed.

"Bonnie?" There's a change to Caroline's voice, that unsure and watery waver that it gets when she thinks she's about to be disappointed or something terrible might have just happened. "You are okay, right? Bonnie?"

Swallowing a few times, Bonnie tries to work some moisture into her mouth and dry throat. She nods from her prone position and then flops her body over onto her side. Her head bobs in a faint nod of agreement. "I'm awake, Caroline."

She tries to focus on her blonde friend and fails utterly. Mostly because Caroline is moving at vampire speed and Bonnie goes from blinking at the blonde lurking in the doorway of the bedroom to blinking at the blonde standing at the side of the bed with a happy, relieved smile on her face. "Oh, thank God, we were so worried about you."

Caroline slides onto the side of the bed, her hands going for a cup with a straw on the bedside table. "Can you sit up? Do you need any help? Here's some water." The straw is tilted toward Bonnie and the cup held by Caroline. "You're probably exhausted. I remember back when I had that horrible flu freshman year. Do you remember that? You and Elena -" Caroline stops, her voice hitches and she plows onward in typical Caroline full-steam-ahead fashion, " - came over to watch television and play games with me after the fever broke and I was useless. All I could do was lay on the couch and listen to you guys talk and remember? You had to move my little iron around the Monopoly board -"

Bonnie opens her mouth several times in an attempt to get a word in edgewise as she pushes to a sitting position. She's aided by Caroline who manages to reach around her and arrange pillows and tuck in covers and never spill a drop of water out of the cup. Bonnie takes it and sips the lukewarm water - pleasantly good which just goes to show how dry and dehydrated her body must be - in order to make sure she doesn't end up wearing it. Caroline continues with the pillows and the prattle until Bonnie finally is able to speak over the young vampire's voice.

"Caroline." Bonnie's interjection is firm, but gentle.

The blonde vampire stops, looks at Bonnie and then laughs lightly. "I'm overwhelming you, aren't I?"

"Just a little." Bonnie takes another sip from the water and lowers the cup. "I got sick, didn't I?"

There's a slow wobble of Caroline's head up and down. "You did. Really sick. And we were worried. But you're better now." Caroline breathes in and out and it's one of those things that Bonnie still has to get used to, watching the rise and fall of shoulders and chest with the intake of air that the other young woman doesn't really need. "Do you think you can eat something? Do you want to eat something? I can make you some soup or maybe some crackers? Soup and crackers? Or - oh! A shower! Well, you can wash in the sink, there's no hot water unless you want a cold shower -"

"Caroline." Louder and firmer this time. Bonnie waves the empty cup at her friend. She'd complain about being sick and having to be cared for, but she can already feel herself drifting and figures the complaining will have to wait until later. Then she can find out where she is, and how Jeremy and Elena are doing, and Sheriff Forbes too, though she must be doing better if Caroline is here . . .

A sharp, quick shake of her head is given and Bonnie winces as pain lances through the skull. Her hands go to her temples and she gives a soft, "Ow."

"Are you okay? What's wrong? What can I do to -"

"I think I just need some more sleep," Bonnie says. She's already slumping back down against her pillows, eyes fluttering closed. "Remember you fell asleep before we finished playing Monopoly. . ."

"I remember." There's a hitch to Caroline's voice again and infinite sadness only Bonnie's too tired to process it and decides she'll ask about it later when she can stay awake a bit longer.

The unfamiliar pillows are so very soft.

####

Bonne drifts in and out of awareness for . . . she doesn't know how long. The curtains are always drawn when she awakens, though she usually can't take much more than a few breaths and roll around on the bed before Caroline is there with whatever she needs. Or whatever Caroline thinks she needs: soup, crackers, water, warm ginger ale. Sometimes she thinks she wakes to a pair of niggling familiar pale blue eyes watching over her, or Alaric's concerned/relieved face, but what she remembers most is Caroline. Caroline's soft singing, Caroline's babble and prattle, Caroline attempting to care for her in the ways that no one has since Grams died.

One day - one night - Bonnie doesn't know for time due to the heavy curtains and the silence outside and all around - she comes out of it completely. Blinks her eyes open, sits up and reaches for the cup of water - graced today with a purple swirly straw - that's always on the night table and within reach of her hands.

Sipping, Bonnie looks around. She's still tired and drained, and suspects she might be for a few days more, but she's alert. Alert enough to allow her gaze to move around the bedroom that isn't hers. It isn't Caroline's either or any of the bedrooms in Elena's home. She thinks it might be a bedroom at the Lockwood mansion or even the boarding house, but that makes no sense to her so she simply shelves it until she can ask.

The furniture is old, heavy wood and dark woods. Teak and cherry with form and shape that speaks of being carved in the past, not in the sixties or the fifties, or even the forties. This is old stuff, the sort of stuff that is a true antique going back before the days of the Antebellum south. There are old books on the bookcase and scattered over desktops and spilling over the shelves. There's enough of a crack in the curtains for her to make out that much, the sharp slant of golden yellow spilling across the floor and providing a bit of illumination.

Breathing a sigh, Bonnie returns the empty water cup to the nightstand and throws back the covers. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed drains her small spurt of energy, though she continues looking around even as she wrinkles her nose.

"I stink," Bonnie mutters. The dark t-shirt isn't familiar and the bedsheets have that cloying smell of sickness to them. She vaguely has the impression of Caroline promising clean sheets and clothing as soon as Bonnie was well enough to get out of bed, but it's a fragmented memory that slips through her fingers like sand.

"You've been sick and sleeping for days," Caroline chirps as she crosses the threshold.

The sudden appearance of her friend causes Bonnie's head to jerk up in surprise and a yelp escapes her before she can stop it. "Caroline! Don't _do_ that!"

The blonde vampire gives her a sheepish smile, "Sorry. You've been a little out of it, so the coming and going didn't phase you so much. I'll make more noise." She holds up two fingers, "I swear."

"Thank you. I'm pretty sure that in my condition I'm ripe for fainting," Bonnie says, but the words are light and teasing. "What -"

The words are cut off as she's suddenly enveloped in the arms of her best friend, and the pair goes toppling over on the bed. "I'm so glad you're okay!"

Bonnie gives a gasp of air, a cross between laughter and simply having the wind knocked out of her, and Caroline rolls over, sits up and begins apologizing profusely. "I'm sorry, did I hurt you! It's just that you were so sick and I was so worried -"

"It's okay, Caroline." Bonnie catches her breath and takes her friend's hands in her own. "Just tell me what's been happening. Where am I? How are Elena and Jeremy? How's your mother? How long was I sick? Have they found treatment yet -"

Caroline takes a breath, and her smile wavers. "Bonnie -"

"Needs to eat." Alaric's voice interrupts from the doorway. He holds up a bed tray, and he's barely a foot into the room before the smell of chicken noodle soup wafts to Bonnie's nose and she's salivating. "It's just soup, but you'll need to start small."

The less than subtle look exchanged by the history teacher turned vampire hunter and cheerleader turned vampire isn't unnoticed by Bonnie. It's simply that she's far hungrier than she thought she was and she's looking at the tray with soup - and a smattering of crackers - like a starving vampire looks at an open wound.

"Go slow," Alaric cautions as Caroline busies herself helping Bonnie adjust the pillows and prop herself up in bed to eat. "Small spoonfuls until you're sure you're going to keep it all down."

Bonnie nods, and accepts the tray and the pampering with good humor. She intends to ask questions while eating, because apparently Caroline and Alaric plan to stay and watch her eat, though she's getting the feeling that Caroline is watching her eat, and Alaric is watching Caroline and it's a scenario that makes no sense to Bonnie's way of thinking, but in the end the soup is more important and she finishes half the bowl and two crackers before she comes up for air.

"Healthy appetite," Alaric notes as he takes the tray away. "That's a good sign."

Bonnie snags a last cracker before the tray disappears completely. Though apparently that's not needed since Alaric only places it on a nearby table and then busies himself looking around the room. "Ok. So, tell me what's going on. Where is everyone - where am I?"

"The boarding house," Caroline chirps as though Bonnie waking up in the boarding house is the most natural thing in the world.

"I'm at Stefan and Damon's?" Bonnie asks, her gaze darting around the room anew.

"Mm-huh," Caroline bobs her head up and down, and sits at the foot of the bed with her legs folded. "The hospitals were just ... I mean, you couldn't take people there and -"

"You're sleeping in Stefan's bed and wearing my shirt."

Bonnie's head swivels to see Damon leaning in the doorway, that far too familiar shit-eating smirk on his face.

She looks down at the shirt, up at Caroline to Damon and back to Caroline again, who nods.

Pulling a face, Bonnie tugs at the shirt collar. "Ew."

"You're welcome, Witchy," Damon drawls. "But the alternative was to have you sleeping naked and we thought Ric might get some naughty ideas about his students."

Just like that, the vampire is gone as quick as a blink.

Bonnie stares at the space where Damon was for a heartbeat. Then her head swivels back to Caroline. "What the hell is going on?"


	3. Chapter 3 - What's Lost, What's Not

_No one so young should carry so much weight on their shoulders,_ Ric thinks.

Standing at a respectful distance, Ric watches Bonnie kneel on the patch of grass between the two freshly dug graves. Her head is a bowed and one hand rests on each mound, scattered with wild flowers because braving the streets of downtown on the hopes of finding live flowers in a florist couldn't be risked. Her slight shoulders wobble and shake, and if he strains his ears enough, Ric can hear the soft sobs rising up from the young girl.

He's torn between going to her, offering support and sympathy or just letting her grieve and come to terms with it in her own way. Ric doesn't know Bonnie any better than he does Caroline, and everything he does know has come through their common struggles with and against the supernatural that inhabits their world. His link to Elena was much more tangible, even as tenuous as that was - connected through the threads of the two women he loved.

What links him now to Bonnie and Caroline is that they've all lost the same people in Elena and Jeremy, whom Ric tried hard to find a way for whom to be some sort of support. He thinks that he failed and did it quite miserably, not lifting his head beyond his self-pity and the bottle of alcohol until they both fell ill.

He knows that he would have crawled right back into that bottle after they died, if there had been time. If Bonnie hadn't fallen ill, and Caroline hadn't worried, and Bonnie hadn't gotten _better _instead of worse. If Damon hadn't hovered, watching him like he thought Ric would be the next thing to slip away.

Ric tries not to wonder why he never fell sick, and why he is still standing when so many more useful and productive have fallen. When he does, he looks at Damon, who seems to be only as connected to the world as it is to him, and right now, that connection comes from the last remnants of Mystic Falls. He considers Caroline, when his faith falters, who might be a predator and a killer, but is _still _Caroline, the cheerleader, the peppy one, the girl without a mother who is struggling to find her way. Now, too, he sees Bonnie, the one who tried to be strong, who made tough choices and was willing to give up everything for her best friend who now lies beneath the ground anyway.

He's still here for a reason, and Ric thinks that the patchwork rag tag team that they make are his reason and his tether.

The lift of Bonnie's head and her glance back over her shoulder in his direction interrupt his thoughts. Ric casts the maudlin aside and makes his way over to the younger woman - a still learning witch, his former student, and mostly a little girl as lost as the rest of them are. Laying a hand gently on his shoulder, he offers silent sympathy and support.

Bonnie reaches up to touch his hand, and he likes to think that she is taking something from that touch. From his presence. "Are you sure that they were both -"

"Yes." Ric doesn't allow her to complete the question. He still has far too many nightmares and sleepless nights where he watches Elena and Jeremy rise from their homemade burial shrouds, empty eyes and clawed fingers reaching for him. That is one thing that Ric has never doubted or second-guessed in those initial days of madness and societal collapse. "We were sure, Bonnie. Damon and I made sure."

The witch nods, and slowly makes the rise to her feet, easily accepting Ric's outstretched hand for assistance. She smooths her palms down the front of her black dress she'd insisted on wearing. It wasn't a funeral, or even a memorial, but Bonnie wanted to say goodbye properly. Even Damon, who'd given her several once overs with an unreadable look on his face and careful neutrality in his eyes, hadn't hassled her about the decision.

"But not everyone . . ." Bonnie trails off, her gaze slip-sliding around the empty cemetery. Ric mimics her, if only because he is constantly on guard these days unless they are safely ensconced in the boarding house. The dead walk everywhere these days, but oddly they don't come to the one place where they would be most welcome, and where they should be.

"No, not everyone turned into a zombie," Ric finishes for her. "Some people died and stayed that way." He wonders if they were the lucky ones, if their souls are at rest, or if even the souls of those who sat up again are restful. Ric isn't much of a religious man, but the days spent in and out of Baptist church and Bible school some days come back to taunt him.

Bonnie pushes her hair over her shoulder and purses her lips. She falls into step with Ric as they head toward the car. "Sometimes I wish that -"

"No, you don't." Ric stops and looks down at her. Again, he knows what she was going to say because he's been there before. Those thoughts aren't alien. "That's called survivor's guilt, Bonnie. I've had my fair share of it, but you can't think that way. I don't get into all that comforting religious stuff, but I have to think that maybe there's a reason we're the ones left. I don't know what it is. But maybe we'll figure it out someday."

For a long moment, Ric thinks she will challenge him or argue the point. Instead, her shoulders slump with a sigh, her green eyes heavy with sadness and resignation.

_Her eyes are old. _It's something that Ric used to hear the old folks say when he was growing up and he never understood what it meant until recently. When he came here, these kids were _kids, _they went to football games and hung out at the Grill and snuck off to have secret keg parties in the woods. Within months they were still wearing the bodies of teenagers, but they had all aged. They all had old eyes.

"It's weird." Bonnie cants her head and toys with the necklace she wears. "I was taking care of them. I fell asleep and when I woke up the whole world had changed." She sighs and frowns. "Ended. It ended. And it had nothing to do with vampires or hybrids." There's a pause as a breeze blows, whispering through the grass and carrying the remnants of the old world - a page of newspaper, a leaflet, the petals of dead flowers - across the ground.

Bonnie half-kneels, half-leans over and picks up the leaflet. It's religious scripture calling on people to repent because the time of judgement is near. "Seems weird to imagine it happening . . . almost overnight."

Ric almost argues but then changes his mind. He peeks at the leaflet. "Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows. Seems fitting." He continues walking, leading the way to the car. Every now and again, he looks back around them, constantly alert for an incoming, shuffling zombie. "It did happen fast. At first the sickness moved slow. People would be sick for days. Feverish, and then they'd hemorrhage out . . ." Stopping, Ric clears his throat and realizes that she probably doesn't want the details. She can read them in the newspapers, what there were of them before the presses stopped.

"It started happening a lot faster as the sickness mutated. People lived two, maybe three days. Near the end, when the hospitals were shut down . . . it was maybe a day." That was when soldiers roamed the streets, sick and dying themselves, shooting anything that moved, because the dead weren't staying dead. When the news reports started telling people to stay inside until the madness died down, when martial law became synonymous with shoot-on-sight and chaos. "It took those left a while to figure out that the dead weren't just walking, but that they were infectious too. By then, it was too late."

"It must have been horrible." Bonnie shivers and Ric suspects that it has little to do with the light summer breeze.

"It wasn't a picnic," Ric tosses the words out jovially, hoping to bring some lightness to the conversation. "That was how we know that you weren't sick like everyone else, though. Days passed and you didn't get worse. You didn't get better, but you didn't get worse. Then Caroline said that you _smelled _different. Not as sick." It was one of those moments that reminded Ric that just because Caroline looks like a bubbly blonde cheerleader, she's a vampire beneath it all. "That's when we moved you to the boarding house."

"And put me in Stefan's bed?" Bonnie lifts a brow, and for the first time since arriving, there's a touch of humor in her eyes.

"Would you have rather woken up in Damon's bed?" Ric teases.

Bonnie shudders and pulls a face. "No."

"You really don't like him." It's not a question as much as it is a statement. Ric knows there's history between the witch and the vampire, an established relationship that was forged before he came onto the scene. Off her look, Ric holds up his hands, "I'm not judging. Damon is . . . difficult to like on a good day, never mind his bad days." God knows the vampire has _a lot _of bad days.

"I know he's your friend, Alaric." Bonnie stops, worries her lip and seems to think about her words. "I don't know _how _I feel about Damon. I don't actively hate him anymore because at least when it came to Elena he could be human. But he's been such a loose canon and hurt so many people . . ."

"It's hard to see the good in him."

Bonnie pushes her bangs back from her forehead. "That's just it. It's not, not anymore. The problem is, he embraces the part that isn't good. I know that we're all in this together now, and he'll watch my back if only because he thinks it's what Elena would have wanted." She sighs as they reach Ric's SUV and he holds the door open for her. "But I can't forget the things he's done. Or what he is. He's not Caroline. She struggles. Damon just goes with it."

Ric can't argue with the witch's assessment. He holds the door open a moment after she's climbed inside, waiting until she turns those too old eyes to him again. "Good for you. Stick with that. I think I give him a free pass too easily sometimes. If we're all going to do this thing together, Damon needs someone calling him on his shit." He closes the door and crosses to the driver's side. "Call me on my shit too if I go to easy on him."

"I'm good at calling shit."

The vampire-hunter turned teacher turned not-quite-mentor laughs at her frankness. "Yes, Bonnie. I think that you are."


	4. Chapter 4 - What Lies Ahead

"We have to look for survivors." Bonnie jumps off the island counter of the kitchen, tossing out her pronouncement as though it's the most logical course of action _ever_ and all others be damned. Damon supposes that somewhere in that little witchy-seventeen-year-old brain of hers it really is, but that doesn't make it _right._

The vampire responds the only way he knows how. With sarcasm and a look that he hopes is as scathing as he's trying to make it. "Seriously?"

"Yes." Bonnie looks at him. Her eyes are hard and already tilting toward annoyed, which is pretty standard operating procedure when she looks at him. "_Seriously._"

"No," Damon speaks slowly, as if talking to a very small and very dimwitted young child. "What we have to do is decide where we're going next. Downtown Mystic Falls, is _not_ on the list of summertime vacation destinations."

"We can't leave if there is even the possibility of there being anyone else alive here. We _have_ to look."

Damon peers at her, pulls a face and rolls his eyes. He's in her space in the blinking of an eye, but Bonnie being _Bonnie_ doesn't bat an eye and doesn't even take a step back. Her green eyes flash defiantly up toward him, daring him to come even closer and challenging him to make his point. _Who do you think they're going to listen to? _Bonnie's unwavering gaze seems to say. _You? Or me? _

Because at the end of the day, they both know that Bonnie's bleeding heart and do-good attitude is going to have Caroline backing her up in a heartbeat and Alaric trying to smooth things over.

"What part of _flesh eating zombies_ did you fail to understand?" It doesn't stop Damon from saying the words or spelling out his point. "We're only safe here because we're not noisy and they haven't picked up the trail of yummy witch and history teacher eats. You are just _begging _for trouble by waltzing into town unready and unarmed -"

"Then I'll be ready. And I'll be armed."

"You'll be _dead._"

"Not as long as I can still do _this._" She's barely completed the last word before she's flicking her fingers and Damon feels the ground leave his feet. Or rather it's his feet leaving the ground as he sails backwards across the kitchen and slams into the refrigerator. It's not hard enough to injure him, but it knocks the wind out of him and snaps his back against the stainless steel with a loud, reverberating thunk. He waits to hit the ground, and when that isn't happening, he's peering at her with a great deal of annoyance - and a smidgen of respect for her abilities that he'll _never_ admit to aloud - as Bonnie holds him pinned with her magic.

"Impressive," Ric says, and even though he's trying hard to hide it, Damon can hear the amusement in his voice.

Caroline makes no attempt to hide it, loosing a loud giggle.

"Only when there's one of them," Damon points out. "What if there's more than one? What if you're surrounded?" He can maintain his dignity and make his point even when being held up against an expensive and underused appliance by invisible threads. "Put me down."

Bonnie cocks her head and opens her mouth, but Ric cuts her off at the pass. "Bonnie, let go of Damon, please. Gently." The other man turns his attention to Damon and gives him what Damon likes to privately call his 'warning chaperone face.' Given that Ric _really_ sucks as a chaperone, it's neither that daunting or that impressive. "Damon don't bait Bonnie. Let's all just talk about this - _rationally - _for a few minutes."

Damon strongly suspects that the emphasis on the _rationally _part was aimed specifically in his direction. The invisible tethers vanish instantly, and Damon drops, only catching himself before face planting on the floor by the sheer grace of his vampire reflexes.

"What's there to talk about? Did you look for survivors?" Bonnie turns from Damon to Ric, and as quick as that the most dangerous person in the room is forgotten about and relegated to the importance level of Vampire Barbie. Damon glares, because he hates being ignored and he _hates_ being dismissed even more than he hates being ignored, and he hates that Bonnie is so full of herself and her power that she doesn't even flinch or give off the little hints of fear she once did when dealing with him.

He takes a step forward, and Caroline is in his path as subtlety as Caroline can be subtle. A shoulder and a leg, a quick glance over her shoulder as though daring him to push through her - as though Damon wouldn't if he had a reason to do so. But really, Caroline is too easy and Ric would frown and it would hardly be a point to having a hand in nursing Bonnie back to health if he just went ahead and drained her.

Besides, they might end up needing that witch's brew later.

Ric sighs, exchanges a glance with Caroline and frowns at Damon who just leans back against the refrigerator and smirks with his arms folded across his chest. "No, we didn't."

"It was getting dangerous out there," Caroline steps up, hugging herself around her midsection. "We brought you here because you weren't as sick as everyone else and by then -"

"It was _Dawn of the Dead_," Damon interjects, earning a glare from Caroline and another one of those supposedly warning looks from Ric. "Not a good time to go door-to-door checking for crazies with shotguns hiding in their front closets."

"Bonnie." Ric draws the witch's attention before she can throw a spell at Damon just because she _can_ throw a spell at Damon. "Everything happened fast. People started dying, and then . . . not all of them stayed dead." A shadow flickers across Ric's face and he swallows hard. His gaze slides somewhere past Bonnie, to a nondescript spot on the wall, and then slowly returns. Damon can see the memories and the weight in his friend's eyes and it makes him shift uncomfortably, avoiding Ric's eyes - and Caroline's - as he pretends that the ceiling tiles are of great interest.

"Not everyone got sick like you, and you know I didn't get sick at all. A lot of people were bitten by _those things. _. . and they turned into them. We just wanted to hole up and be safe."

"But you just said it yourself. Not everyone got sick. And I got better. There could be other people out there who survived and don't know what's going on. People who didn't have friends to take care of them, and wake up to and explain things -"

"Who might have gotten chomped on by the living dead while they were mostly comatose," Damon feels the need to interject. "Who'd turn down a free and easy meal?"

"Not you," Caroline rolls her eyes and snorts.

"All that bagged blood? Not going to last forever, Blondie." Damon pushes away from the refrigerator and joins the trio gathered around the kitchen island of the Salvatore Boarding House kitchen. It's eerily lit with candles and lanterns and one LED lamp despite the fact that the sun is reaching its zenith in the sky, and it's not quite noon yet. The boarded windows stop all but a few jagged blades of light from beaming inside.

Leaning against the counter, Damon shoots Caroline a look. "You might want to think about not being so judgemental and picky in the future."

"Damon." The warning comes from Ric, a dark glare accompanies the gasp from Bonnie, and it's Caroline who's the last to _get it_.

"Eww. Just .. eww! Why don't you just eat a zombie -"

Damon laughs and its both amused and harsh. "I wasn't talking about corpses or zombies -"

"Just don't!" Bonnie holds up a hand. Her green eyes flash in the dim light as she gapes at him. "Do you even listen to yourself sometimes?" Beat. "No. Don't." Her shoulders roll back as she takes a visible breath and breathes it out, purposefully turning away from Damon as much as she can. "How many people do we know, that we don't know are dead? Just think about it."

"Matt," Caroline pipes up. Her voice wavers a bit. "He was ... sick. I was taking care of him and my mother and . . I went back and he wasn't there. But ... his neighbor had said she was going to drive to the hospital and would take Matt too even though the hospitals weren't taking anybody. I tried to check the hospital after my Mom -" There's a pause and a swallow and though he won't admit it aloud, even Damon feels that tugging pang of _loss_ because he has few friends, and Liz was one he counted among them.

_At least she didn't change. _

At the end, so many did.

"The hospital was dangerous. There were soldiers and they were checking people and I couldn't stay," Caroline finishes sadly.

"Then Matt might be alive." Bonnie straightens, a soft smile on her face. "There. That's one."

Damon snorts derisively. "That's wishful thinking."

"It's _human_ thinking, Damon," Ric says and there's no warning, no sharpness to the tone. It's gentle and sympathetic and _tired_ and Damon wonders when Ric became so tired because now isn't a good time. The end of the world is here, and they can't afford to be tired if they want to survive. Really, Damon _wants_ to survive because almost dying permanently has shown him that no matter how bad the shit is - and between having to shoot friends and bury their bodies, and having a brother who is still tearing a swatch of bloody murder and dismembered corpses along the coastline the shit _is bad _- he's not ready to throw in the towel yet.

"Tyler went missing," Caroline adds. "It all happened around the full moon and with everyone being sick . . . " There's a flash of guilt across Caroline's face, her gaze turning toward the floor.

"That's two," Bonnie says gently, reaching out a hand to touch Sob Story Vampire Barbie''s hand. "You didn't do anything wrong, Caroline. From what you've told me, there was a lot going on."

"But there isn't now. It's calmer. We should look." Caroline agrees and she turns to Damon with that determined look on her face that she saves for ordering around cheerleaders - none of those left - and being her neurotic, control freak of self. "It can't hurt to look."

"It can't hurt _you_," Damon points out. "I see two people here who can become zombie chow and I'm guessing that's not a fun way to go." Also, Damon did not sign up to watch any more people he knows become shambling card carrying members of the living dead club.

He knows though from the look of resignation and guilt on Ric's face and the set of Caroline's shoulders and the wrinkle of consternation across Bonnie's brow that he's already lost this argument. Damon wonders briefly why he didn't just get the hell out of Dodge when the shit hit the fan, after Liz, after Elena, after Andie -

"Safety in numbers. We'll stick together. We'll do this organized, periodic sweeps," Ric says in acquiescence.

_That's why, _a niggling little part of Damon's conscious says as he watches the group put their heads together to plan. He came to this town to tear it down, and he seems to be clinging to the only parts of it left that might mean anything at all.

###


End file.
